Advertisers are refusing to return to X – formerly Twitter – after the platform’s owner Elon Musk told them to “go f*** yourselves” if they try to pull their marketing from the microblogging site. After Mr Musk was accused of antisemitism last month, a number of the world’s biggest companies and X’s biggest advertisers, including Apple and IBM, pulled their marketing from the platform. While the Tesla chief initially said he was “sorry” and denied any suggestion he was antisemitic, he later added that advertisers who withdrew their marketing from X because of his tweet should “go f*** yourselves”. “If someone is going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money? Go f*** yourself. Go f*** yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is,” Mr Musk said at the New York Times’ Dealbook Summit. “The whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company and we’ll document it in great detail,” he added. Now, a number of marketing agencies say the brands they represent are firmly against returning to advertising on X. “Thank you Elon Musk, for making it very clear how seriously you take advertisers concerns... Advertisers, judge for yourselves if this is a man who you can do business with,” Lou Paskalis, the founder and chief of the marketing consultancy AJL Advisory, posted on X. “There is no advertising value that would offset the reputational risk of going back on the platform,” Mr Paskalis told NYT. Advertisers are unlikely to step in to support X, said Ruben Schreurs, the chief strategy officer at marketing firm Ebiquity. The row began last month after Mr Musk endorsed a post claiming that Jewish people “have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them” as the “actual truth”. In response, a number of top companies, including Apple, Disney and Coca Cola, have since removed paid ads from X – moves that could slash the company’s revenue by millions of dollars. Watchdog Media Matters also published a report alleging that ads on X were being placed next to posts supporing Nazism, in response to which the social media company filed a defamation claim against the group. Mr Musk’s rank at the Dealbook Summit came come on Wednesday. “I will certainly not pander,” the multibillionaire said. He even took a direct jab at Disney chief Bob Iger who had earlier explained why the entertainment company had pulled advertising from X. Just hours after Mr Musk’s expletive-laden comment on Wednesday, X chief Linda Yaccarino attempted to soften the damage, sharing the owner’s apology on the platform and appealing to advertisers to return. “Here’s my perspective when it comes to advertising: X is standing at a unique and amazing intersection of Free Speech and Main Street — and the X community is powerful and here to welcome you,” Ms Yaccarino said. “Businesses are simply full of people, and people like to be treated well, respected and dealt with with dignity,” Steve Boehler, founder of marketing management consultancy Mercer Island Group, told NYT. Read More Everything we know about Tesla’s Cybertruck after first cars are delivered Musk says antisemitic tweet was ‘foolish’ – but blames media for angry reaction Elon Musk believes OpenAI may have made ‘dangerous’ discovery OpenAI may have made a ‘dangerous’ artificial intelligence discovery, Elon Musk says Elon Musk publicly tells advertisers to ‘go f*** yourselves’ Elon Musk mocked for trying to resurrect QAnon Pizzagate conspiracy

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Russia and Ukraine were locked in a serious stalemate in Moscow’s continuing invasion of the country and needed to sit down for peace talks, Belarusian president and Vladimir Putin’s close ally Alexander Lukashenko said. “There are enough problems on both sides and in general the situation is now seriously stalemate: no one can do anything and substantively strengthen or advance their position,” Mr Lukashenko said. “They’re there head-to-head, to the death, entrenched. People are dying,” he said over the weekend. This marks the first time the Belarusian president has come forward seeking truce in the conflict and called for a “stop” command. "We need to sit down at the negotiating table and come to an agreement," Mr Lukashenko said in a question and answer video posted on the website of the Belarusian state news agency BelTA. "As I once said: no preconditions are needed. The main thing is that the ‘stop’ command is given," he said. A geographically closer nation to Russia, Belarus’s territory was used as a launch pad for the Russian preident’s full-scale invasion in February last year. He is also the only international leader to have frequently met Mr Putin since the conflict engulfed Ukraine. He said that Ukraine’s demands for Russia to quit its territory needs to be resolved at the negotiating table so that “nobody dies”. In June this year, Mr Lukashenko said his country had started taking delivery of Russian tactical nuclear weapons, some of which he said were three times more powerful than the atomic bombs the US dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Mr Lukashenko has relied on Russian subsidies and political support to rule the ex-Soviet nation with an iron hand for nearly three decades. In what is a purported exchange for the strategic ties between Belarus and Russia, he allowed the Kremlin to use Belarusian territory to send troops into Ukraine in February 2022 at the start of the invasion. Russia deployed forces to Belarusian territory under the pretext of military drills and then sent them rolling into Ukraine as part of the invasion that began last year. Mr Lukashenko also publicly supported what Mr Putin calls a “special military operation” inside Ukraine, alleging at a meeting with Mr Putin in early March that Ukraine planned to attack Belarus and that Moscow’s offensive prevented that. He said he brought a map to show the Russian president from where the alleged attack was supposed to take place, but offered no other evidence to back the claim. The vast war frontline in Ukraine has moved little in the past year despite Kyiv’s gruelling months-long offensive. Major military warfare is concentrated in eastern and southern Ukraine’s pockets. Ukraine has continuously rejected the proposal of peace talks and imposed pre-conditions that Russia withdraws every single of its military personnel from Ukrainian soil without keeping the territory from where Russian troops fire missiles. Ukraine said it will not rest until it ejected every last Russian soldier from its territory. It said the invasion was an imperial-style land grab by Russia, the world’s biggest nuclear power. American president Joe Biden said last year that a direct confrontation between Nato and Russia would mean the Third World War. On Saturday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said his 10-point peace plan, which includes calls for the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, is the only way to end the war. Read More Russia-Ukraine war: Putin ally Lukashenko warns of ‘serious stalemate’ Crowd storms Russian airport in search of Jewish passengers from Israel flight If Putin dies, this is what would happen in Russia Crowd storms Russian airport in search of Jewish passengers from Israel flight If Putin dies, this is what would happen in Russia Ukraine bombards Russia with drones as Putin suffers losses in fight for Avdiivka

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